1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an image forming apparatus and an image forming method for printing data of a WWW server and also relates to its storing medium.
2. Related Background Art
In recent years, in association with the realization of a network of information, there has been realized a system in which a WWW (World Wide Web) server which holds various information and a computer in which dedicated software (hereinafter, referred to as a browser) to access to the server by an HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) has been installed are connected by a network (internet, intranet) and the information on the WWW server can be referred from the computer. In this system, since the information on the WWW server can be stored into the computer by the browser, a print output of the information which has once been stored in the computer is instructed to a printer from the user, thereby enabling the information on the WWW server to be printed and outputted by the printer.
According to the foregoing conventional method, however, in order to obtain the information on the WWW server as print information, it is necessary for the user to designate the printing to information equipment having a printing function after waiting for him to once finish the storage of all of the information into the computer. Therefore, in the case where it takes time to obtain the information from the WWW server due to a cause of a traffic of the network or the like, the user has to wait until the information is stored into the computer. When the obtained data is printed, a process for converting the data to a format which can be printed by the information equipment having the printing function needs to be executed by the computer. Therefore, processes in the computer become heavy and become an obstacle in case of executing another program in parallel.
In the case where the information equipment having the printing function which is used is equipment connected onto the network, information transfers of two times of an information transfer from the WWW server to the computer and an information transfer from the computer to the information equipment occur, this results in a cause of an increase in traffic of the network. Particularly, in many cases, a size of data converted to the format that can be printed by the information equipment is large and, in case of transferring the information from the computer to the information equipment, the influence on the traffic is large.
In recent years, in association with the development of the computer network technique, various information can be freely obtained through various information media, information services, or the like. However, those information is updated everyday and in order to always obtain the latest information, the user needs to periodically perform a similar operation on the computer. For example, in case of periodically printing out in order to always get the latest information, the user accesses to a desired information resource on the WWW server from an application on the computer and obtain it every print-out and, after that, issues a print request to the printer by a printer driver.
However, the operations such that a desired information resource on the WWW server is accessed from the application on the computer and is obtained each time the print-out is performed and, after that, a print request is issued to the printer by the printer driver as mentioned above need fairly many works and are troublesome. Particularly, when a frequency of accessing to the information resource is high, such a problem is serious.